Arablish

Arablish is the practice of writing the Arabic language using the Latin alphabet as used in English. It is commonly used in Internet chatrooms and electronic mail, especially when typing in Arabic characters is difficult or impractical.

Normally, a local spoken form of Arabic is used, not al-fuṣḥah, the classical/standard language. For example, in an IRC channel called #lebanon, North Levantine (Syro-Lebanese) would be used; in #kuwait, Gulf.

Since the Arabic alphabet contains consonants not found in English, numerals or capital letters can be used for certain consonants. For ع ayn, the voiced pharyngeal fricative, the numeral 3 is used; its voiceless counterpart, ح haa, a numeral 7 or a capital H. Other numerals such as 2 for ء hamzah (glottal stop), 6 for ط taa and 9 for ص saad may be used. There is no single standard for Latinization of these Arabic letters.

The term can also refer to mixing Arabic with English in conversation.

Some Arablish words:

• 7abeeb "beloved, baby" (in Arabic script: خبيب)
• ba3deen "later, afterwards" (بعدين)
• inshaa2allaah "God willing, hopefully" (إنشاء الله)
• jum3ah, jom3eh, gom3eh, etc. "Friday" (جمعة)
• 6aalib, 6aaleb "student" (طالب)
• wa6an "home country" (وطن)
• 9aa7ib, 9aa7eb "friend, sir" (صاحب)
• (al)ma3'reb, (al)maghreb "Morocco" (المغرب)
• akhbaar, a5baar "news" (أخبار)

(Single or double 'a' may be used for the vowel ا /a:/.)

Arablish has been used, intermixed with English, by Iraqi blogger Salam Pax.